They spent the next two weeks doing nothing but trekking through open wilderness, trying to make it to the border of the Oclan kingdom and relative safety. The way forward had been a treacherous one. There were several instances when they were forced to hide as roving groups of humans carrying farming tools as weapons almost ran into them. If not for Russel’s senses, they would have then been forced to lie and make up excuses. She wasn’t confident that whatever lie they came up with would have been convincing enough for these people to believe. They were on the hunt for the werewolves that had burned down her village but to them, any wolf would do. Russel could pass as human but there was always a chance someone got lucky and sniffed out his true nature.

So, in the interest of playing it better safe than sorry, they elected to stay away from any and all humans. Especially ones carrying pitchforks.

“We are close to the border to my kingdom now,” Russel told Lola one day after getting done with their training. She was picking up on things a lot faster than Russel would have guessed. Her skills with hand-to-hand combat were coming along nicely and her ability to do the exercises had grown considerably as well. Her body had started to take on a lean, hard look. All slim musculature mixed with a powerful physique. The soft, frightened girl he had rescued in Gloucester was disappearing right in front of his eyes.

“Good,” Lola said in answer. “I’ll be glad when we stop getting delayed whenever people happen to come around. This close to the border, you’d think there would be fewer settlements. Where are these people even coming from?”

“With the frequency we’ve been seeing them, I imagine King Harrison has levied some kind of bounty on the werewolves responsible for Gloucester.” Russel just finished putting their supplies back on Serk. Then he looked at her, his eyes serious. “I have a feeling most of the humans we keep encountering are not overly selective on the werewolf they kill. Or the King for that matter.”

“Then we’ll keep staying away from any and all humans,” Lola said. “You’re right. It’s a risk at this point anyway. If anyone finds out you’re a werewolf, they’ll kill you. They won’t care that you were the one that saved me. Or that you protected me from the wolves actually responsible.”

“We won’t be able to avoid everyone forever,” Russel said. He gestured toward their sack of supplies. “We’ve pretty much exhausted what Brenner got us. We’ll have to venture into a city before long.”

“A city?” she asked, confused. “Wouldn’t that be too risky? A city would have tons of people.”

“Exactly,” he said. “It’ll be easy to lose ourselves in the crowds. There is a city not too far out of the way. It’ll put an extra two or three days on our travel but will be worth it. We can get enough there to last us till we get into Oclan.”

“Wrexon?” she asked.

“Yeah, that’s what the map says anyway,” he replied. “Why? Is that bad?”

“Wrexon is the third largest city in the kingdom and very close to the border,” she explained. “Which means they have a sizable garrison there. There’s knights and soldiers crawling all over the place.”

His face fell and then went thoughtful, trying to readjust and adapt his plan.

“That would be problematic,” he said. “But at this point, there’s not a whole lot we can do. The land around here is sparse and there’s very little in the way of vegetation or even animal life to hunt. If we don’t get more supplies, we won’t last long enough to get to Oclan.”